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Niveus introduces new Zone HTPC with multi-room capabilities

Niveus is best known for its pricey home theater PCs (HTPCs) and media servers, but its new unit carries a more reasonable price tag— sort of. The new Zone is only (in Niveus' world it's only) $1,499 for an Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, Blu-ray player, and a DVI-to-HDMI adapter for hooking it up to an HDTV.
Written by Sean Portnoy, Contributor

Niveus is best known for its pricey home theater PCs (HTPCs) and media servers, but its new unit carries a more reasonable price tag— sort of. The new Zone is only (in Niveus' world it's only) $1,499 for an Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, Blu-ray player, and a DVI-to-HDMI adapter for hooking it up to an HDTV.

The most interesting feature, however, is the Zone's ability to synch up with other Zones in other rooms of your house. That means they can share content (like Blu-ray movies) with one another in addition to being able to tap into content from a server on your home network. (They can also interact with other networked media devices like Sonos' multi-zone audio solution.) Niveus hopes the Zone platform breeds a development community that will share apps with Zone owners.

With its tiny form factor, low energy requirements, and CableCard support, the Zone looks like a decent HTPC, though the hard drive is far too puny, especially if you plan to use the system as a DVR. But its true potential resides in having a few Zones around the house, which quickly adds up to thousands of dollars. In other words, you need to be the typical deep-pocketed Niveus customer to fully appreciate it.

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